


Coda

by Haepherion



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Angst, But together maybe one day they will be, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Raleigh and Mako are not okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 05:50:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1499005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haepherion/pseuds/Haepherion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's curled painfully small into a ball on his side of the bed, trembling and shaking underneath the covers. Little whimpers make their way from between his parted lips and she feels her heart clench. There are tear tracks on his face, fresh tears leaking from the corners of his tightly shut eyes. Not for the first time Mako wishes she had the power to take away his nightmares and bear the burden upon her own shoulders alone.</p><p>But just as he cannot take away her nightmares of the kaiju destroying her city, she cannot take away his fears. All they can do is share the burdens, and hope that together they can be stronger than the creatures that haunt their dreams.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda

_"Mako," Raleigh pants, spitting sea water and blood out of his mouth. Her pod is closed, and he knows that if it doesn't open within the next few minutes she's going to run out of oxygen. She already didn't have enough in the suit, and if she can't breathe she's not going to -_

_Raleigh yells as he punches at the plexidurable material of the escape pod, before remembering the emergency handle on the outside and yanking on it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He's wasted precious seconds clambering out of his own pod, and even more time swimming over to hers. The top of her pod flies off with a hiss and she's there, lying with her eyes closed and her helmet still on._

_"Mako," he breathes. She’s there now in front of him. She’s made it, they both have, and the kaiju is dead. It’s all over and he can’t wait to celebrate but first he needs her to open her eyes._

_He waits._

_Waits for her to sit up. To give him an exasperated look maybe, roll her eyes a little and say, "Don't worry I'm fine, stupid." And then he’ll smile and ask her on a date and there’ll be the future that he never thought he’d have after Yancy died._

_She isn’t moving._

_He gathers her limp form up into his arms and pulls off her helmet, tossing it off somewhere into the ocean. She looks small and frail, her skin translucent against the dark black of her hard armor and her body is deathly still._

_"Is she breathing?" A voice, Herc Hansen's, he recognizes vaguely, sounds in his earpiece._

_It's hard to tell under all the armor if her chest is rising or not (it has to be) so he rests a hand on top of her chest and leans down until his ear is over her mouth. Nothing. Not even the faintest hiss of a breath in or out._

_"Mako," he chokes, because this can’t be happening. Not after all of this, not after fighting so hard and winning against three kaijus that day and saving the whole damn planet from creatures of another realm. This isn't the way it’s supposed to happen._

_"Mako, please," he whispers, like maybe if he begs hard enough it’ll bring her back. She looks calm against the dark water, half of her body still in the escape pod, half in his arms. Her eyes are closed._

_"No vital readings from the pod," Herc’s voice says quietly in his ear._

_"Mako," he pleads, "Mako....Mako..." He can't go through losing a partner again, can’t survive having half his soul ripped apart, the surviving half of him a severed wire, a broken circuit that'll never work without another person._

_"Please," he sobs. Her eyes remain closed._

 

\--- 

 

Mako wakes quickly but quietly. She has taught herself to be alert at the drop of a pin in her room because even the smallest tremor could mean an imminent kaiju attack. When she was younger, it was the byproduct of nightmares waking her up in the middle of the night, believing that there was going to be another kaiju attack. She thought the dreams would go away when the kaiju did but of course, life is never that simple. Even from the grave those monsters are still changing her life and those lives around her.

 

It’s dark outside when her body alerts her to wake up. Just the hint of a sunrise peeks over the edge of the horizon, pink and gold and beautiful over the waters. She doesn't think she'll ever get used to seeing wide-open bodies of dark waves without feeling a deep-rooted distrust.

 

It is precisely why she and Raleigh decided to live by the sea; so that maybe one day, they could look upon the stormy waves and rolling waters without fear. 

 

Raleigh is the one that wakes her. 

 

He's curled painfully small into a ball on his side of the bed, trembling and shaking underneath the covers. Little whimpers make their way from between his parted lips and she feels her heart clench. There are tear tracks on his face, fresh tears leaking from the corners of his tightly shut eyes. Not for the first time Mako wishes she had the power to take away his nightmares and bear the burden upon her own shoulders alone.

 

But just as he cannot take away her nightmares of the kaiju destroying her city, she cannot take away his fears. All they can do is share the burdens, and hope that together they can be stronger than the creatures that haunt their dreams.

She sits up quietly and moves closer to him, shifting the blankets tangled around his body. Very slowly, she turns him until his back is pressed flush against her front, until she's got her arms wrapped around him from behind and their legs are so entwined she's not sure if she knows where his start and hers end. She moves so that her head is resting in the dip of his shoulder and just breathes. 

 

He smells like sweat, and fear. 

 

Mako rubs a hand soothingly on his chest, right over his heart. It beats strong and steady against her fingertips, pumping voraciously from the adrenaline of the dream. 

 

She strokes over every inch of skin, knowing that in time he will wake up on his own. It is no use to try and wake him up violently, it is even worse to try and shake him awake. This, she knows from experience. 

 

There are scars on his chest and over his arms, from when he was fighting the kaiju that killed his brother, and later from years of working in the construction sector. Even more scars, fresh ones, litter his shoulders and back and torso. They’re from the final fight. She takes her time on each one, smoothing over them with deep, firm touches.

 

Mako's got a collection of her own scars. They define who she is. They define both her and Raleigh to the world as heroes, as the saviors of the planet. But she knows what the scars really mean. They are survivors. 

 

Raleigh sobs. 

 

"Raleigh, you are safe," Mako murmurs into his ear. She touches him everywhere, stroking his back, his sides, gently wiping away the tears on his face. 

 

"You're safe, you're safe, you're safe," she whispers, presses kisses down his spine into his tense neck, sighs the words against his rigid shoulders. 

 

"Mako," he cries out, once. And then just as suddenly as he says her name he jolts awake, breathing hard. 

 

For many minutes he does not move as she continues to move, massaging warmth into his goose fleshed arms, reminding him always that she is here, with him. 

 

She does not push him to tell her what he dreamt about. In the end, they always find out each other's nightmares anyway. They no longer need words to communicate the horrors they see in the abyss of memories full of human screams and blue kaiju blood. 

 

Eventually Raleigh stops gasping in air like he's drowning, but he still trembles in her arms. 

 

The sun is just starting to peek out over the waters when Raleigh begins to shift. Mako gently untangles her arms and legs from him. As much as it hurts her to see him suffer, it is even worse when he doesn't want to share it with her. There times when he chooses not talk to talk to her about it and instead slinks away, sometimes to run along the sandy beach until he drops from exhaustion, sometimes to sit in the salt water until his skin wrinkles and the sun sets again. 

 

But he doesn't leave her today.

 

Instead, he turns on the bed until they're facing each other, so close that their noses touch, close enough that she can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes. His eyelashes are wet with tears, the whites of his eyes shot through with red from crying.

 

She knows that right now, he needs her to not say anything. There aren’t words heavy enough to express how terrified he is.

 

When he’s ready, he’ll speak.

 

It doesn’t take him long. He raises a hand and brushes it down her cheek.

 

“I dreamt that you were dead.”

 

It’s a dream he’s had often, Mako knows. It’s morbidly funny that now, after all of their worst nightmares have happened in real life, their minds still manage to come up with creative ways to torment them and make the darkest realities even worse.

 

“You made me use the escape pod so you could stay in Gipsy and detonate the payload. You got into a pod. I saw it surface and thought you were okay. When I opened your pod you were already dead.” He says this all in a flat voice, expression clearly telling her that he’s still lost in the horror of the nightmare.

 

Mako looks steadily into his open, vulnerable face.

 

“I’m alive,” she says quietly; her lips brush against his when she speaks. It sounds so stupid to say something so obvious, but this is what Raleigh needs right now. They’re so close to each other that Mako can feel his shaky exhales on her lips. He pulls her body in to his. He’s hot like a furnace, still sweating from the exertion of fighting his nightmares but she doesn’t complain. She would never chose to move away from him when he needs her.

 

Being together like this, pressed against every single inch of each other’s skin, it almost feels like they are in a drift again, sharing the same mindscape. Where they once needed a machine to facilitate the readings of each other’s minds and emotions, now all they need is a single touch. The kiss he lays on her lips is chaste but powerful, one thousand and one thoughts and feelings, fears and hopes, all expressed between the touch of where their bodies join together.

 

He needs this, to reassure himself that she’s alive, and she needs this, to know that he’ll be okay.

 

Their breathing patterns even out until their hearts beat at the same rate, even and steady and one with each other. Rays of sunlight stream in through the window and warm their bodies, still intertwined.

 

Raleigh is the first to let go. This is how they do it, always. Whoever has the nightmare that night gets to hold the other person, until the dreamer feels ready to let go of the nightmare. Only then, do they split apart.

 

Raleigh looks like he’s about to thank her, or apologize maybe, so she shakes her head and places a finger on his lips before he can do it.

 

“Swim?” she says. He nods.

 

This is something else in their routine they do. Routine gives them comfort. In the past before the thought of a kaiju-less world even existed, Mako never could have imagined herself settling into any sort of rhythm in life. It was impossibility when her entire family was destroyed by the kaiju attack.

 

She grew up when she was seven years old and learned to be wary, always on the move, ready for the next attack. And then when she was older she was always up at odd hours to be on call, in case they suddenly needed another jaeger pilot. Or she was up sparring with others in the training room, or working on new specs to improve the jaegers. Always so busy.

 

Some days she still wakes up in frenzy, feeling her gut clench in anticipation of a kaiju attack.

 

So her and Raleigh have established a routine. When they wake up, they eat a simple breakfast, and then they swim. Sometimes in the afternoons they’ll go for a walk or wander in to the small city, 15 miles inland, and visit people. During the evenings they’ll return home and walk along the beach, cook a simple dinner and then fall together in bed.

 

The weather is always lovely along the coast now. They live in a secluded beach house on the outskirts of Australia. Half of the country has been destroyed or submerged by kaijus; most citizens that used to live there have long since moved out for fear of kaiju attacks, and never attempted to move back.

 

In the beginning, many people would come to the country to seek them, to thank them for saving the planet. The reporters and journalists made the whole area claustrophobic, until one day Raleigh had a panic attack after the reporters asked him what he saw when he was in the wormhole. No one bothers them, now (Mako’s made sure of it).

 

Swimming is something they do every day.

 

It keeps them fit. But more importantly, it keeps them emotionally strong.

 

Mako’s never been one to shy away from her fears, no matter how many times she has to wake up each night and stare out the window at the sea, wondering when the next kaiju will strike.

 

This is something that they must do, to prove to themselves that they will not be controlled by the kaiju even though they both know that the creatures are gone for good. 

 

The sea, Mako has read in Japanese poetry, was once thought of as the mother’s womb of all living creatures on earth. She remembers when she was a child, reading lore of the lands and dirt as the father and the oceans as the mother of the planet. And just as the waters can bear monsters that hurt and maim, so it can heal.

 

Raleigh leads them out onto the sand, where he slowly strips off his t-shirt and boxers and drops them to the sand. She steps out of her nightgown and does the same.

 

She knows he’ll never see himself the way she does. He’s beautiful, golden brown skin gleaming under the sun. Even with scars snaking their way around his body he’s lovely.

 

“What?” he says, a small quirk to the side of his mouth. Mako smiles and shakes her head.

 

“You first,” she points to the water.

 

They wade in slowly, one after the other. And they keep walking, on and on and on, until Mako can no longer feel sand under her toes and she has to kick her legs and make circles with her arms to stay afloat. She keeps going though, until Raleigh also can no longer touch the bottom either and they are just two people, floating in the salty abyss of the Pacific Ocean.

 

Mako can feel her heart beating in her ears.

 

This is what she fears. With the waters too dark to see the bottom, one of her fears is of swimming deep enough where she can drown, and knowing that a kaiju could rise up from the waters and tear her limb from limb quicker than she can scream.

 

She knows that Raleigh has this fear too.

 

They float in the water until he swims over to her and then they’re floating together, their naked bodies holding each other up, reassuring each other that they are safe. Nothing can hurt them. Not anymore.

 

When Raleigh crushes his salty lips to hers it feels like a promise. Like the first time they kissed, high on adrenaline from taking down the kaiju that almost destroyed the earth. Like the seal of something permanent, that no matter what, this will always bind them together. The depthless waters don’t seem so scary anymore when they float on top of the waves in each others’ strong arms.

 

They kiss until they both run out of breath, and then they just stay floating on top of the ocean, soaking in each other’s presence. Because no one, not a single person on this earth, will ever understand what it was like. Herc is the last living person that knows what it is like to share a neural handshake with someone in a jaeger, to feel a connection so strong that it irreversibly tattoos the other person’s innermost thoughts into the most intimate parts of yourself. But more than that, no one will ever know what it feels like to fall together into a different _planet_.

 

Sometimes, it’s all Mako can do to reassure Raleigh that he is alive, and not just living a dream after death.

 

Today, with the bright sun reflecting off the waters, with the smell of the ocean and the taste of salt on her lips, Mako feels something shift in the atmosphere.

 

Though Raleigh still looks haunted he seems…lighter, somehow.

 

“What is it?” she asks. They flip onto their backs so they don't have to tread water and then they simply float, staring up at the blue sky. A few soft clouds puff along. Summer is coming, the air heating up and causing the waters to be warmer. On another side of the earth it is winter but here, it is always warm.

 

They hold hands so they don’t float away from each other on the waves.

 

“I’m glad I chose to fight with you, that day,” he says, a little smile in his voice. Mako smiles too. She knows it’s his silly little way of saying “I love you.”

 

“I am, too.”

 

When they both get hungry they swim back to shore and Raleigh makes some sandwiches while Mako grabs a picnic basket and fills some water bottles.

 

They sit outside under a tree on the beach and eat, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip. It’s peaceful and a nice breeze blows past them, whipping Mako’s hair to one side. Raleigh laughs a little and tucks the hair behind her ear for her, kissing her on the cheek.

 

At night, they fall into bed together and everything is as it should be.

 

Mako suspects that one day, she’ll find the routine and order tedious. Raleigh will, too; he is such an active man that sometimes it’s strange to see him so still and calm. She knows that one day he, too, will find their life right now monotonous. Both of them will one day want to rejoin the world, help rebuild the coasts from the dirt up and restore them to their former glory and beauty. But today is not that day.

 

Maybe when they have both healed, they will be ready to return to the world as the heroes everyone sees them as. But for now, they are just Mako and Raleigh. They have each other, and that is enough.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I watched this movie last night and I thought it was amazing! I'm sad that I didn't watch it earlier. I am about one year late to this fandom and am super sad about it because where is everyone, please come back so I can be excited about the movie with you :( 
> 
> Anyway. Meant to write fluff, turned out to be angst. Combined both, so now it's flangst. Yeah.


End file.
